Uniform
by mergirl007
Summary: Liz reflects on her years in the Gallagher Academy. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Ally Carter owns the Gallagher Girls series.

A/N: It gets less emotional later on, unfortunately. I blame the late hour. (It's nearly 2 a.m. now.) Oh well, hope you enjoy it anyway.

* * *

I'm twelve and scared. I've seen how the other girls joke about their parents' missions, and with every giggle I feel more and more like an outsider. Someone should just tattoo NOT FROM SPY FAMILY on my forehead and finish it. I bite my lip and wonder why they chose me, a tiny, thin girl with little confidence and less physical grace. I hope classes are better, though I know that I'll probably be outclassed there too. I rub my thumb on my plaid skirt and notice that it doesn't quite fit me.

I'm thirteen and proud. Bex slings an arm around my shoulder and greets me; I fluently respond in Swahili. I'm Liz, and I'm a Gallagher Girl. I proved that last year when I outscored my classmates in every class except Protection and Enforcement. I glance at the seventh graders' table and quickly memorize their faces. My intellect is my weapon, my photographic memory the sharpened edge. I straighten my blazer and go in to dinner, a fifteenth of the eighth grade.

I'm fourteen and wistful. I've done extra credit projects for the first time this summer, because being with my old friends is too painful. We don't click anymore; two years apart have left us separated, and none of us know how to bridge the chasm. I'm no longer from two worlds, the Roseville one and the Tuscaloosa, Alabama one. I spent most of my time in my bedroom in August, counting the days until I arrived in Virginia. The tag of my new blouse chafes me.

I'm fifteen and scatterbrained. Joe grinned at me. Grinned at ME! I spent hours out by the pool yesterday hoping to see him again. I'm cherry-red now and I hurt where the sun scalded me, but I ignore it. Never have I dragged my feet so much while walking into the Gallagher Academy. For the first time I wish that I was back in Alabama, not stuck in an all-girls school. My regulation shoes are a bit too tight for my feet; I must have grown this summer.

I'm sixteen and apprehensive. I fell asleep in front of the television last night, the bright images dancing inside my eyelids. The footage of the attack on Cammie and Macey plays over and over during my REM cycles, and I wake up exhausted. This is the first time that the outside world has intersected so brutally with the one behind the Gallagher Academy's manicured hedges, and it shocks me out of my complacence. In three years, Cammie and Bex will risk everything weekly. In three years, I will hold agents' lives in my hands, and if I can't hack quickly enough or I upload documents into databases too slowly... my stomach turns over, and I have no appetite for the last breakfast I will share with my family for months. I pull my school-issued jacket out of my bag and put it on, shivering as I walk to the kitchen in my pajamas and start making hot chocolate.

I'm seventeen and focused. A stack of books that I borrowed from Mr. Mosckowitz last May weighs down my left arm, and I'm running through my latest equations in my head. I know I missed something, because the projected results were absurdly far off when I ran the program on my laptop last week.... A Code Red blares through the mansion, and I drop my books everywhere. Cammie appears out of nowhere at my elbow, and we hurriedly pick up the tomes before she squeezes my arm and vanishes to the first floor to join the rest of our class. I nearly follow before I see that the books are doctorate-level physics texts that no normal high schooler would ever understand. The nearest secret passage opens as soon as I pull on a statue that is beginning to spin, and I set down the stack of books just inside the entrance. A Gallagher Girl always pays attention to details like those books, even one not destined for work in the field. My socks are rolled down to look like ankle socks; now I unroll them and smooth them. Time to play the boring, nerdy student.

I'm eighteen and ready. This year is for filling in the cracks, for smoothing us until we walk out of these doors perfectly polished and prepared for anything. This is my last first day at the Academy. I've grown inside these walls; the term Gallagher Girl has turned from a foreign phrase to my definition. And whether or not I wear this uniform, it will always be next to my skin.


End file.
